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Shadows move outside the door, and I take Lavinia’s hand and squeeze it. “Tell the Dukes I’m going to be okay, and that I don’t need them out there protecting me.” I hold her stare, willing her to believe me. “The Princes may have done something stupid, but they aren’t going to hurt me.”

After searching my eyes, she relents with a heavy nod, stepping back just as the doors open. Lex peeks his head inside first, eyes landing on me immediately, but then he moves aside to let Lavinia through before holding the door open for the others.

Pace stalks in first, eyes sweeping the room, but it’s Wicker who approaches me. His blue eyes fix right onto the scratch on my face, and when he reaches up to touch me, there’s a deep frown etched into his forehead.

I shrink back, shaking my head. “Don’t.”

Wicker pulls his hand back like he’s been burned.

Lex is in a pair of scrubs, and it’s such an odd thing. In situations like this, I’m used to seeing him in a lab coat. Right now, he looks ragged and lost, his amber eyes taking in the equipment. “Munson thinks you’re going to heal up fine,” he says, voice uncomfortably bland. “With a little downtime to heal the abruption, and a lot of close care, your pregnancy should progress normally.”

My tongue feels fused to the roof of my mouth. “She… she said you worked fast.”

Lex makes an odd face, as if he’s smelling something unpleasant. “Wicker, mostly.”

Pace crosses the end of my bed, a hand coming out to brush the lump of my feet over the blanket. “I’m sorry,” he says, the words sounding foreign but sure, just like the remorse in his eyes. “We—” he flicks his eyes to Wick. “No,Ifucked this up.”

“A lot of crazy shit went down tonight,” Lex interrupts, shooting me a quick glance, “but the only thing that matters is that you’re okay.”

“But I’m not okay,” I say, unable to put it off any longer. I meet their gazes, one by one. “You were going to take me away. From my family. From my friends. From my responsibilities. You were going to keep me from looking for her.”

Wicker groans. “We were doing it to keep you—”

“Safe. I know that.” I take a steadying breath, aware that I need to keep my heart rate down. Even Lex sends a worried glance to the monitor. “You could have told me what was happening, and I would have told you there were other options.”

“Red,” Wicker starts, mouth pinched, “I know you’ve gotten a crash course in Ashby’ing these past few months, but there are no three people more qualified to know what getting away from it is going to entail. Fast and under the radar was the only option.”

“I know it was shitty for us to not include you, but we couldn’t afford resistance,” Pace adds. “Not when there was so much on the line.”

That’s the crux of it, though. When it came right down to it, they didn’t care about my opinion. It held no value to them. It doesn’t matter that their intentions were pure.

Their actions weren’t.

But mostly, there’s this: “How am I ever going to trust you with our son?”

Lex’s forehead knits up. “What are you talking about?”

I’ve seen what it’s like to belong to a Royal who hates me. Spites me. Resents me. That was awful in its own right, but our child is going to see a side of them that’s possibly even scarier.

Because they’re going to love him.

“You’ll take him away,” I say.

All of them rear back, like they’ve been slapped in the face. I don’t understand why—not at first. Not even when Pace promises, voice low and intense, “Not from you.”

But the fear is fresh, nagging at the back of my mind. “If I become a big enough obstacle, you will.”

Wicker’s eyes darken, that same thread of bizarre disgust pulsing from within them. “You’re wrong,” he says. “We’re not in the business of taking babies. We’re nothim.”

The realization is galling, churning in my gut like a sickness. “I-I-I didn’t mean…” But I suppose, in some way, that’s exactly what I mean. Stealing things, ferreting them away, controlling and imprisoning…

This is all they know.

Breathing deeply, I decide, “It doesn’t matter. The fact is, I’m not trading one cage for another, and I’m definitely not subjecting my child to one.”

This next part should be easy to say, but it isn’t. The sad truth is that somewhere, deep down, I want so badly for these men to have the chance at becoming something more than what their father has made them into.

But not at the expense of the small, fragile life growing inside of me.